


Say What Now Dearie?

by Polerfan1986



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Funny, No Angst, Randomness, Rumple gets his own back on the OUAT Writers, Rumple kicks the OUAT Writers up their arses, Rumple pops in for tea and a chat with the OUAT Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 06:49:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6693835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polerfan1986/pseuds/Polerfan1986
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very, very random, hopefully funny one-shot that I just felt the need to write recently (no prizes for guessing why lol).  I really just wanted to write what I think, nay what I would love Rumple to do with the writers if he randomly turned up in the writers room one day.  I can’t imagine he would approve of absolutely everything they’ve done with his story can you?  For some reason in this story I mentioned Rumple having the ability to morph between his Imp and his Mr Gold appearances at will, something that doesn't happen on the show.   I think that would happen to my version of Rumple when he's severely pissed off or when the supply of magic is dwindling in this world and I wanted to test reactions to it and because I miss the imp side of him on the show.  Oh and the next part of A Little Chat which will be Belle’s reaction to Rumple’s talk is currently underway, so hopefully that should be up soon.  Just a little warning there is some mild swearing in this one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say What Now Dearie?

One sunny but unseasonably cold day late in April 2016 a most unusual thing occurred, the writer’s room of Once Upon A Time was on the receiving end of a visit from an Imp. The writers were sitting huddled at a table picking over ideas for future episodes, ratings for the show had been on a steady decline for the whole of season five not to mention hitting new season and series lows for almost the entire season.

The writers had for some inescapable reason yet to make the connection that this was due to their tradition of sitting at the table which had suggestions written on pieces of paper strewn across it, closing their eyes, picking a piece of paper at random and running with whatever idea was written on it regardless of whether or not using said idea actually made sense and without any thought given as to how the fans, you know, the people who actually watch the show may feel about it. So it could be safe to assume given the recent falling ratings they had been experiencing that most of the writers’ ideas for season five and some would say season four as well which really hadn’t been much better, had gone down like a lead balloon with the viewers.

The next thing they knew, a shrill giggle came for the corner of the room and there amidst an evaporating cloud of purple smoke in all his leather-clad, scaly skinned glory stood the imp, Rumplestiltskin. There was a chorus of shrieks followed swiftly by a few well placed “what the fucks” and a stampede towards the door which promptly slammed shut in their faces seemingly of its own accord. “Well hello dearies” the imp said calmly with a smirk on his face “going somewhere where we and I’ve only just arrived, how rude” he said putting a hand to his chest and raising his eyes in mock offense.

“Aren’t you even going to offer me a cup of tea?” he chirped clicking his fingers and making a tea service appear. “You” he snapped to one of the writers “you can serve the tea.”

“How are you here, you’re not even supposed to be real?” the man asked.

“Oh” Rumple began "I’m very real, every fairy tale has always had some elements of truth in it, consider me one of those elements, it’s why I’m here that you and your friends should be more concerned about” at this point the man gulped, “I hope your better at making cups of tea than you are at writing scripts” the imp said with that same high pitched giggle.

“Now” he began as soon as he was served his tea and teacakes, satisfied that he had everyone’s attention, “you may not all be aware of this but some years ago, two of your writers discovered that myself along with several other well-known fairy tale characters are in fact quite real." He sat down in a chair at the head of the table and swung his feet up onto the table top scattering papers as he did, “and they made a deal with me and those other characters through me to able to tell our stories and I believe the word accurately was mentioned at some point in the conversation” he ground out and then took a sip of his tea.

“I know I’m a very old man but my memory is extremely reliable and last I checked the contract between us was extremely binding, my contracts always are. Anyway in exchange for permission to tell these stories, your show would expose new generations to us or rather our characters and hopefully encourage them to believe in us and enable magic to grow and develop again in this world after being absent for so long. Not to mention my personal stock was running low at the time and I do require quite a bit to transform myself from this” he gestured to himself “into my more normal looking visage at will, and then there’s the potion making and spell casting etc. You get the point I’m sure however, it’s recently come to my attention that you haven’t quite been sticking to our contract have you? Naughty, naughty” he said wagging his finger at them.

“Well down to business, let’s see some scripts shall we” Rumplestiltskin said and with a flourish of his hand several scripts appeared on the table and one hovered in front of him in mid-air “yes, we’ll start with this one I think “Heroes and Villains.”

At that someone at the back of the room let out an audible “oh good fuck, hide me” and tried to make a break for the door.

“And I think we have the first candidate for transformation into a nice juicy snail right there” Rumple murmured without budging from where he was seated and gluing the writers temporarily to their own seats as he continued to read, the pages of the scripts turning by themselves. After Heroes and Villains he read several more scripts from season four and then picked a few at random from different seasons including “Desperate Souls”, “Skin Deep”, “A Land Without Magic”, “The Crocodile”, “Quiet Minds”, “Our Decay”, “Her Handsome Hero” and “Ruby Slippers”.

“Highly appropriate name for an episode of this show is that one” he had muttered when he got to reading “Our Decay”, “because that’s exactly what seems to be happening here to this show of yours, it’s slowly decaying with every episode dearies.”

One of the writers finally plucked up the courage to ask a question that had been bothering all of them since the imp had appeared in the room “how did you even know about what we've been doing with the stories, the ratings or to come here?".

At this Rumplestiltskin looked up from his reading and replied with a smirk “Oh dearie, I’m the dark one, I have ears, my ears have ears, do you follow?” the woman nodded and Rumplestiltskin returned to skimming scripts, eating his way through a plate of teacakes at the same time the silence in the room as he continued reading was deafening.

Rumplestiltskin finally finished the last of the material he had selected and sat back in his seat with a sigh, “Oh dear, oh dearie, dearie, dear we can do better than that I think”.

“We?” someone squeaked.

“Yes we dearie are going to do a rewrite, tweak a few things here and there, and then I will cast a spell so that no one remembers your version of events, but they will certainly know mine."

“Why do you need us then, couldn’t your magic just write a new script for you?”

Rumplestiltskin giggled again “because magic is complicated and doesn’t work that way sonny boy. We made a deal, a contract was signed that said you would write the scripts hence you shall write them, but there was nothing in there that said I couldn’t dictate them while you are writing them, however first I shall be doling out a few punishments I think.”

“Punishments, what for?” again that same voice from the back asked.

“What for?” Rumple burst out laughing “let me see” he began counting with his fingers, "there’s my first wife abandoning me and my son for that pirate when I thought she had been kidnapped, me losing my son, me being locked in a cage by that green-faced hag, my son being killed, pairing my daughter-in-law with of all people the pirate."

“Daughter-in-law” a man spluttered.

“Yes, daughter-in-law” Rumplestiltskin replied. “You see in the real story, the one you decided not tell and thereby deviated from our contract, Emma and Bae are married” he hissed. "She’s not too happy with you by the way, wanted to come with me but I told her that even though I would love to have her along, my way of dealing things would be cleaner than the use of a sheriff’s firearm. Oh and speaking of people who are unhappy with your work Regina also sends her regards of course, Emma and Bae had to restrain her naturally enough and put her in a cell under watch to prevent her from following me here.”

"Then there is also the matter of what you have done to the character who is supposedly my second wife, my true love, my Belle. That and your mistakes with Bae are the ones I think I would prioritize because I could probably see past some and I say some of your other errors if you hadn’t messed up the stories of my son and true love.”

“You’ve done such charming work on her haven’t you, turned her into a right sanctimonious, hypocritical, single-minded, willfully ignorant, foolish, gullible little girl, good job with that, a dog’s dinner wouldn’t be as messy as the relationship you’ve portrayed between me and my beloved Belle. I gave you a very accurate account of Belle and as I’ve already mentioned, in spite of it’s being very crowded in here” he said tapping his head “side effect of a very, very long life you understand, there is fuck all wrong with my memory.”

"My Belle has always been one of the bravest of women she would never even consider touching the dagger much less using it against me. She would certainly never try to use my love for her or our children against me or to manipulate me in any way, yes children you remember I told you, we have two boys and a girl. No my Belle would never sink that low, she’s a better woman than that. She knew what I was from the beginning and she loves me and accepts me for what I am warts and all. She would certainly never behave like the self-righteous, holier-than-thou little brat you have portrayed her as and if she had I certainly wouldn’t have capitulated to her I’m too long in the tooth for that kind of crap, as much as I love her if she had ever been like that with me I would have walked away from her long ago and we certainly wouldn’t have had any children either.”

“Have you see what some of your viewers are saying about your version of Belle? They hate her”, he said pulling a sheet of paper from thin air “and I quote She is very rarely present and when she is shown she has the exact same basic monotonous dialogue in every scene no matter what character she is speaking to. Belle is a tried and true hypocrite who has little to no reason for still being on the show as she contributes nothing of any value to it. However she certainly detracts from it” he was shouting at this point “for example she’s done Rumple no favours as he was a much better character before she came along and also in every scene he’s ever been in without her, it’s like the writers are trying to beat Rumple into submission to satisfy their twisted version of Belle."

"She usually only serves one of two purposes walking library or leverage. Even having her as the librarian is pointless because there is nothing that Rumple and Regina don't know about magic or have lying around in some spell book of theirs. So the idea of having Belle pull some fact out of the air about anything magical that either Rumple or Regina don't know about is preposterous at best and ludicrous at worst. That is how you have portrayed my true love as well as the relationship between she and I, it’s sickening, not to mention it’s another direct deviation away from the contract set out between us.”

“It’s such a shame you know, things started out with such promise on your little show back in it's first season when it was about inspiring hope in people and now well not so much anymore really, in fact it’s getting closer and closer to circling the drain at the moment. Now where was I before, ah yes punishments” he said with a gleam in his eye. “Here’s how this is going to work, I’m going to plant my foot up your arses so hard none of you will be able to sit properly for quite a while."

"As for your less fortunate colleagues like Mr “Heroes and Villains” over there in the corner, who had my wife portrayed as using the dagger against me and abandoning me and Mr “Quiet Minds” who had wrote about my son being killed and me being locked in a cage by that green-faced bitch, and your friends over here like “Mr Ruby Slippers” and Mr “Our Decay” who portrayed my wife as nothing short of an insipid, useless, naïve and stale annoyance well I have something special in mind for them."

Approximately fifteen minutes, several pointy toed boot shaped bruises on backsides, three new roses in a vase by the window and five lovely new snails in the plant pot on the desk in the left corner of the room later…The writers who still remained gingerly attempted to arrange themselves in comfortable standing positions as not one of them felt that they would be able to sit for at least a fortnight thanks to the bruises they’d been left with from Rumplestiltskin literally kicking them all up the arse.

They were the lucky ones, their less fortunate colleagues had become floral and invertebrate respectively, the imp said he would change them back before he left only because while he’d had his wife’s full support in giving them a good swift kick she might object albeit very mildly to transmogrifications. 

Belle had quite liked the Gaston rose in the Dark Castle until she found out it was Gaston, then she had remarked that it was a little creepy to have him sitting on the table watching them all the time so Rumplestiltskin had placed him in the garden. However the very next day there was a nasty thunderstorm and a bolt of lightning had struck the flower accidentally on purpose and completely incinerated it. Rumplestiltskin had feigned innocence and casually passed it off as an act of the gods and “absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with me my darling” but he knew his wife was smarter than that and that she knew otherwise even if she never mentioned it and that was mainly because Gaston had richly deserved it. Besides he was satisfied that the writers wouldn’t be crossing him again in any way after this little encounter. 

Once the writers had “settled” so to speak back in the room with pens, paper and laptops at the ready Rumplestiltskin began. “Now dearies let a true master of words teach you how to spin a good story”

“Once upon a time, long ago, in a land far, far away, in a small village there lived a man named Rumplestiltskin. Rumplestiltskin was the village spinner and a shy, quiet man, his most precious possession was his only child, his son named Baelfire or Bae for short. Rumple had come home from the Ogre Wars a cripple many years before and his wife who hadn’t expected him to come back at all was full of spite and rage and accused him of being a coward, she left him that day without so much as a look back or a word to either him or Bae. As a result of his injury Rumple returned to his spinning wheel and it was the only thing that kept the scraps of food on the table for him and his son and the rags on their backs.”

“Now around this time the Ogre Wars had begun to get much, much worse and ruthless soldiers went through the villages rounding up every able-bodied man, woman and child to send them to fight, most of them were peasants who had never held a weapon before much less used one and few of them ever returned. Rumple’s son was coming of age and would soon be sent to fight in a battle he wouldn’t return from, Rumple knew this and was constantly plotting how he could possibly get his son to safety. In the end they were left with only one option, to run, leave everything they had ever known behind and venture into the unknown. So Rumplestiltskin woke his son in the dead of night and the two ventured out along a path that lead into the forest, after being harassed and threatened by passing soldiers, Rumple and Bae encountered an old beggar who told him a story about a powerful being known as the Dark One. 

Rumplestiltskin had no idea then but the old beggar was more than what he seemed, and on hearing the tale he told the wheels had been set in motion for Rumple’s own story. A story that would span centuries in which the man who was once the poor town spinner and whom no one ever glanced twice at except to spit on would find himself being begged by Kings and Queens for deals to grant them power, riches and magic. The man whom some called coward and mocked for his injured leg would do battle against wicked witches, pirates and an evil queen. He who thought himself difficult to love and hardened his heart to save himself from further hurt would fall in love with a beautiful princess and earn her love in return and that he would lose his son only to be reunited with him and his family after years of searching and bringing down worlds to find him. Such was the destiny of Rumplestiltskin the humble village spinner who became the most powerful sorcerer in all the realms.


End file.
